Other forms: inkwells
An inkwell is a small container that's used to hold ink. In the old days, students would sit at their wooden desks and dip their quill pens into inkwells.
In the time before refillable fountain pens — and long before ballpoint pens — anyone who wanted to write in ink needed an inkwell. Every few letters or words, a writer would have to dip their quill into ink. Portable inkwells allowed the ink to travel, and school desks had round indentations where inkwells were kept. These schoolroom inkwells were the first to have this name, because they were recessed like a well, or "dug hole."